4.4 Article

On the population density of the argon excited levels in a high power impulse magnetron sputtering discharge

Journal

PHYSICS OF PLASMAS
Volume 29, Issue 2, Pages -

Publisher

AIP Publishing
DOI: 10.1063/5.0071887

Keywords

-

Funding

  1. Free State of Saxony
  2. European Regional Development Fund [100336119]
  3. Icelandic Research Fund [196141]
  4. Swedish Research Council [VR 2018-04139]
  5. Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University [2009-00971]
  6. Swedish Research Council [2018-04139] Funding Source: Swedish Research Council

Ask authors/readers for more resources

The population densities of excited states of argon atoms in a HiPIMS discharge are investigated using a global discharge model and a collisional-radiative model. The study reveals that the reduced population density of high-lying excited argon states follows an inverse relationship with the effective quantum number, indicating the presence of excitation saturation.
Population densities of excited states of argon atoms in a high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) discharge are examined using a global discharge model and a collisional-radiative model. Here, the ionization region model (IRM) and the Orsay Boltzmann equation for electrons coupled with ionization and excited states kinetics (OBELIX) model are combined to obtain the population densities of the excited levels of the argon atom in a HiPIMS discharge. The IRM is a global plasma chemistry model based on particle and energy conservation of HiPIMS discharges. OBELIX is a collisional-radiative model where the electron energy distribution is calculated self-consistently from an isotropic Boltzmann equation. The collisional model constitutes 65 individual and effective excited levels of the argon atom. We demonstrate that the reduced population density of high-lying excited argon states scales with (p*)(-6), where p * is the effective quantum number, indicating the presence of a multistep ladder-like excitation scheme, also called an excitation saturation. The reason for this is the dominance of electron impact processes in the population and de-population of high-lying argon states in combination with a negligible electron-ion recombination. (C) 2022 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.4
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available